Jonathan Levine's research centers on the potential and rationales for policy reform in transportation and land use. His current work focuses on the transformation of the transportation and land-use planning paradigm from a mobility to an accessibility basis an includes a number of funded projects and a book in preparation jointly with Professor Joe Grengs. He is also interested in the design of institutions for emerging transportation systems – which may be based in large measure on autonomous electric vehicles – to serve metropolitan-accessibility goals. He is the author of Zoned Out: Regulation, Markets, and Choices in Transportation and Metropolitan Land Use (Resources for the Future 2006), which argued for transportation and land-use policy reform on the basis of expansion of households' effective range of choices rather than proven modification of travel behavior. His research has been supported by organizations including the Federal Highway Administration, Environmental Protection Agency, Graham Environmental Sustainability Institute, Michigan Department of Transportation, Mineta Transportation Institute, Ann Arbor Transportation Authority, and SMART (Suburban Detroit Public Transit.
Levine's work has been recognized. Together with Professor Joe Grengs and their co-authors, he was awarded the 2010 Chester Rapkin Award for best paper in the Journal of Planning Education and Research. He was awarded a 2011 residential fellowship at the Rockefeller Foundation center in Bellagio, Italy. In 2001, the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development awarded him the Excellence in Urban Policy Scholarship Award, and he received the Best of Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning Award in 1996.
Levine joined the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning as Assistant Professor in 1991. In addition to a Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning from UC Berkeley, he holds the Master of City Planning and the Master of Science in Civil Engineering, with a transportation focus.
